Her Victory

by Alan Sillitoe

  A light of such intensity crossed her eyes at his manic depravity, and the cheering that at last tried decently to drown it, that she would have lost the power of sight for evermore if she hadn’t swung back her arm and let the glass fly at his forehead.

  There was no thought of throwing it, yet on doing so she wished she had blinded him, instead of which the lame missile struck his pullover and fell to the floor without breaking. She no longer cared, but the so-called joke perished in mid-spate. His pale features widened and, enraged at how close he had been to an affliction of sundry cuts at the face, shouted: ‘You fucking bitch!’

  She stared, at the shock of his voice, wondering why he had bawled such an insult. Resentment and desolation showed in his face when it should have been in hers, for he suffered because they were in a place where he could not hit her as he clearly wanted to for having humiliated him in front of his brothers and friends.

  She was seen by his lot as coming from a family that considered itself a bit above theirs, and before the wedding they had made no mistake about letting her know it. Alf had done his best to make her sling something at him (the fact that she had failed to do damage was only through lack of practice) and by succeeding he had not only dragged her to their level, but made an enemy for life.

  ‘You fucking whore. You pregnant cow,’ he shouted against her face while the others tried to pull him clear. ‘I saw you trying to nobble our Harry in the corridor a few minutes ago.’

  Her cool stare prolonged his fury. She had wounded him in the deepest possible way, for the despair in his eyes indicated that it would have been better for his self-esteem if the glass had hit him square in the face and caused blood to flow. He would have had something to talk about, would have been a figure of significance and interest and, most important, would have borne the marks of her surrender to their way of life.

  He was insulted to the core, and diminished himself even further by bringing out such ordinary and expected obscenities that they could in no way be considered harmful. She saw from his expression, as he continued ranting, that he had wanted the glass to injure him. All the bad treatment of women, by him and his brothers, was because they sometime hoped to meet one who would pound them into the dust. The revelation came upon her there and then, but she would not begin on such a course, and thought how lucky she was that neither her aim nor her strength had damaged him.

  Her father would not let her, and therefore himself, be treated in such a way. He swung his elbow so violently that Alf fell like a stone. The anger in her father’s face was fierce, and none of the brothers dared attack him. Only then did George think it time to take her away.

  11

  She and George had been as children, half their lives ago. The determination to have nothing to do with his family was strengthened by the difficulty of keeping the last few minutes of the wedding reception clear in her mind. Something had happened. A quarrel had been broiling, the not uncommon ending at such functions. She had been glad to forgive everyone, but only as long as she didn’t have to talk about the fight either with them or George.

  Time must pass before she could understand what had taken place. She had been terrified that Alf would begin hitting her while everyone either watched or cheered him on. Only her father would protect her, and he was one among many. She had never felt such danger, and the man who should have been by her side, and whom she had just married, seemed as likely to attack her for throwing the glass as Alf himself.

  The mirror was an aid to her reflections. Memories came according to her own nature now that she was in her inviolate room, and a woman of forty could not ask for more than that.

  In the middle of the day her recollections were so real that in her anguish she wanted to smash the mirror, then find the nearest telephone box and call George. She needed to talk to him, though would hardly know what to say. Now that they did not live together the scenes from twenty years ago seemed as if they had happened yesterday. Their reappearance, however, only confirmed their final end, though she was frightened that after a stumbling conversation with George a conclusion might be suggested that was worse than whatever memories the mirror compelled her to face. She would drop under a tube train rather than let her body agree to such a backwards walk.

  Yet the urge to telephone was as imperative as had been her need to leave him, when any considerations there may have been against the move had suddenly gone without trace. She dreaded the act of dialling the number, and on her walks would never go by a call box no matter what zigzag course she was forced to steer through the streets.

  For a while the face that came most often out of the mirror was that of Alf, and she was surprised at feeling no intense dislike. In his drunken need to ‘make her one of them’ he had, it must be said, shown himself more human than the others, who would not have put themselves out to make her anything at all. At the same time she had forgotten as quickly as possible the vileness in Alf’s face, but she had also refused to allow any good that might have been there to influence her opinion for the better. He had been more human because she was able to see in his behaviour a warning that sooner or later George would act towards her in the same way, causing her in that instant to wonder also whether she hadn’t made a mistake in getting married at all.

  George blamed himself for what had happened at the wedding, and her refusal to talk about it only prolonged his feelings of guilt. He had hardly been aware of her existence during the party, wanting to enjoy himself with his brothers who now accepted him as their equal because he had, she heard them say, got himself tied up for life in the same way as themselves. After months of waiting, and the tension of the ceremony, George said that he stayed among his brothers so that she could relax with her workmates from the office. It was understandable, but she had wanted him to sit close by so that his brothers as well as the girls from work would see how loving and united they were.

  As time went on George considered that there was no need for such useless recrimination, wondering why he should worry about a little harmless fun on his brother’s part anyway. The result of this change in George’s attitude was that she felt guilty at having been the cause of the fight, making her think that if she hadn’t married him or, better still, if she had never been born, he might have led a less troubled life.

  In order to prevent him behaving in the way his brothers were seen to treat their own wives, and becoming more like one of them than was absolutely necessary, considering that he was from the same mother at least, she helped him through the complications of starting his business. There was no guarantee that he would resemble his brothers, of course, because some could be very different, but he provided an answer to that one morning when she was halfway through her term with Edward.

  After breakfast and before setting out for work he went, as was his habit, to the lavatory. Having finished, he couldn’t find any paper, and bellowed for some as if he had woken from a nightmare that had terrified him beyond endurance. She was unable to act for a few moments, his noise frightening her in quite a different way to the fear that had for some reason stricken him.

  With a shout he opened the door a few inches so that she could pass a roll of paper. When he came out, the corners of his mouth were flecked with spit, and he was as pale as if he had been blind drunk and then vomited. He tried to say something, his mouth fighting a stone pressed on his vocal chords. His vacuous hazel eyes demanded to know why she had deliberately humiliated him, as if she would now go and tell his brothers about it so that they could all have a good laugh-up together. She sensed no other explanation for his distress.

  ‘You didn’t need to shout like that,’ she told him. ‘I forgot to put some in last night.’

  He stared, but did not see her. She turned to walk away because there seemed nothing more to say about such a small matter, though she realized afterwards that it would have been safer to have screamed at him with fists and fingernails flying.

  After a year of marriage she thought she knew him
well, but now saw – and felt, when he struck her twice across the head – that he was a stranger impacted with unexplained emotions that no life would be of sufficient length to unravel. In any case, she had enough tremors of her own to take care of, whenever it might be possible to consider them.

  Knowing his value, he was often unpleasantly vain, lacking the charm even his brothers might occasionally put on. Some time after the wedding Alf apologized for causing her to throw the glass at him, in such a way that she had to be forgiving. He talked sensibly, and was contrite, and not so light-hearted that he didn’t mean what he said. His features, better-looking than when he tried to be humorous, had the usual vulnerability that pleaded with her not to treat him harshly.

  She fell against the wall as if the roof had pushed her there, but picked up a heavy wedding-present ashtray as she turned to face him. There was no question of throwing. Her intention was to strike at his head. His eyes came to life, their glitter fixed on the glass object in her hand. Like a cat in his dumb suffering he longed for the blow because he would then have paid for whatever he was supposed to have done. She would have nothing left to forgive him for.

  That sort of brawling had gone on all the time in his family, physical argument that left its bruises but cleared the air quicker than otherwise. They were used to it, and thrived on it, but she refused to join in and periodically act out the domestic massacre as a way of maintaining unity.

  He stepped away quickly when she lowered her arm, surprised not to be crouching by the stairs and staunching blood. Either that, or he was disappointed that she wasn’t on her way down town already, to sit in a café with a fag and a cup of tea till the storm had blown by, in which time he would have searched her out and agreed to forgive her.

  ‘Don’t ever hit me again,’ she cried. ‘Do you hear?’

  He didn’t speak, looked anywhere but at her.

  ‘Never. If there’s any more of this, I’m off.’

  She dropped the ashtray into a bowl of water to wash away any trace of what she had almost done. When he went to work she wept, unable to understand why he had hit her for something so ridiculous. She once visited her father, and got back too late to set a meal out, but he only joked about that, when he might have been angry after working hard the whole day.

  She tried to detach him from his family on the assumption that such a course would separate him from his worst traits. They should see as little of his brothers as possible. He agreed, knowing that she was right.

  But to cut him off on all except the superficial level of physical prosperity was impossible, she soon realized. The traits he got from them were, albeit camouflaged, unassailable. He suffered for this as much as she did, at times to an even greater degree, so that she was more sorry for him, at the possibility he had to endure, than she was for herself at being on the end of the powerline. He was like a person plugged into an electrified circuit who doesn’t suffer a shock as long as he holds on to someone else.

  Yet he felt the current passing through, and wanted to let go – to have as little as possible to do with his family because they had, he once said to her, always regarded him as their chosen victim. He went one day to a travel agent’s in town to collect a passport for their first overseas holiday, and on coming out was hailed from the cab of a builder’s lorry by his brother Bert. Trying to remember in what half-demolished street he had parked his car, George was swamped by the various worries of his business, till the imperative tug of his brother’s greeting cleared them from his mind.

  ‘I ain’t seen yer for three weeks.’ Bert indicated that he had suffered as if it had been three years. On checking backwards, George found that he was exactly right, and felt unable to refuse the offer of a quick pint in the Peach Tree.

  Bert parked on a double yellow line: ‘The firm will pay if I get fined,’ though to give his employers a sporting chance he stuck a card in his cab window saying BUILDING IN PROGRESS, then followed George inside as cold rain swept along the road. ‘That’s the trouble with the building trade: when the sky pisses down you’ve got no wok. Not like you, getting set up as your own boss with a cushy inside job.’

  George bought the drinks. ‘It’s not as easy as it sounds. I’m at it sixteen hours a day, and often don’t get a minute to myself. Seven days a week, as well, which is why I ain’t seen you or any of the others lately.’

  Bert put his cap on the bar. There was a line along his brow, and beads of sweat above, his thinning grey hair dampened by it. Tall and thin, he spoke mournfully. ‘I thought Pam had been putting in a bad word about us.’

  ‘She’s as busy as I am, bless her. But she needs a rest. I’m taking her to Majorca for a fortnight.’ He held up the new and shining book: ‘I’ve just been to get our passport.’ For himself, he wouldn’t have bothered with a holiday for another few years but: ‘She talked to a woman at the supermarket who went to Majorca last July, and said it didn’t cost all that much.’

  Bert wanted to have another drink.

  ‘Can’t.’

  He laughed. ‘I’ll pay.’

  ‘Must be going.’ He put the passport in his pocket, another symbol of the difference between them. ‘I’ve got to see an estate agent this afternoon, and there’s a few things to do before then.’

  ‘You’ll work yourself to death.’ Bert bumped against him as they stood. ‘You only live once, you know.’ He was the easygoing sort who would never do anything interesting. George thought it wasn’t only due to his wife, either, who was as slack and idle as he was. Though ten years younger, George was a much smarter man of the local world, and felt older, even protective to his feckless brothers as long as it didn’t cost time or money.

  His car was only two hundred yards away, but Bert drove him there. ‘Save you getting wet through. I expect you’ll be warm and dry in Majorca. I wish I could get clear o’ this effing place for a couple of weeks.’

  If he stopped drinking for six months and banked the money he would be able to go to the Bahamas. ‘You want to try it sometime.’

  Such uncalled-for advice made Bert tighten his lips as he stopped his lorry so close to the back of George’s smart Cortina that George expected to hear a crunch of tin and glass. Bert laughed: ‘I ain’t been driving twenty years for nowt. Your cronky old car’s safe wi’ me.’ He leaned towards him: ‘Listen, George, you’re my brother, and I’m a bit short this week. Can you lend us fifteen quid? I’ll pay you back as soon as I can.’

  George opened the cab door. ‘Money’s tight till I get going in my new premises. I shan’t be in the clear till the autumn. Maybe not even then.’

  ‘I didn’t think you would, you mingy bleeder.’

  George slammed the door as he leapt down, and was searching for his car keys when Bert’s voice came sharply through the loud revving of the engine. He waved something, and George saw his dark blue passport held above a pool of water. ‘You lost this, I think.’

  The precious book corkscrewed towards him, hard to catch as Bert’s laugh followed its descent. Any attempt to stop it floundering in the muddy grit would be hopeless.

  George had never done him harm or wished him ill, and was grieved that his own brother, on bumping against him in the pub, had slipped the passport out of his pocket. He’d done it as a joke, of course, and then given it back, knowing that George wouldn’t doubt where it had gone if he didn’t, but was still sufficiently ill-natured to make him scrabble for it in the wet.

  It was impossible to explain Bert’s dislike. George had done nothing to bring it on. Yet Pam, when he told her about the incident, and now looking back on it, assumed that nothing happened without reason except among those who had been born and would die never having any notion as to what reason might be. Reason was alien to George’s brothers, except in so far as they could vaguely sniff out its existence in others, whom they then proceeded to despise and despoil.

  It might be extremely unreasonable on her part to believe that such people could ever be taught to be reasonable. You we
re either born with reason or you were not, and she saw this picture of their joint passport thrown into the squalor as the act of a person for whom reason would never have any meaning no matter how determined an attempt was made to convert him to its use.

  The only way they could be induced to accept reason was out of fear, which would be worse than leaving them alone, for such a policy would require unremitting effort on the part of those chosen to impose it, who in the process could hardly fail to instil fear into people already accustomed to using reason in their lives.

  George’s brothers chose not to be reasonable, and Bert resented the status of a passport – which anybody could acquire who wanted to go out of the country. Apart from despising those who considered themselves to be in that category, he feared the submission you had to endure while going through the necessary form-filling. He abominated the authority that granted the privilege of having one.

  Some of this may well have gone through Bert’s head when he sent the passport zig-zagging at George waiting below, the action of a person who did not know the meaning of ambition and its all-absorbing work. But now that she had left George she was beginning to see that ‘getting on’ might not have been such a desirable end in itself, though it was also true that without the individual urge towards self-improvement the world would be a worse place to live in.

  George had put himself beyond the range of their pecking order, by marrying someone who did not agree with their ways. They must often have imagined there was still time for her to acquire them – though losing the most vulnerable member of the family when George married out distorted their relationship in such a way that they appeared never to have recovered. In the meantime their hatred was always raging, as if they had been married to each other for decades and not yet found the nerve to climb into bed together.

  Whatever the reason, it seemed as if no technique had yet been developed for getting anything from them except the worst. There was no sign of improvement, nor would there be, she supposed, which was just as well because she didn’t need to use them as an explanation for her clearing out from George. Perhaps the real reason for leaving had been even more unreasonable than any of his brothers ever knew how to be, but if so she had never done anything in her life that had felt so right.